Lynden: 'employees are everything'.

• Author: Anderson, Tasha
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: 2016 Top 49ers - Dialogue with Jim Jansen - Interview

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Lynden's Chairman Jim Jansen explains the company's success succinctly: "We put the customer first." Jeanine St. John, VP of Lynden Logistics, adds, "When we say we put the customer first, we mean to support them with safe services, good employees, excellent equipment, and making sure we meet our customers' needs. That's what it's all about."

Lynden has been safely operating in Alaska since 1954, when drivers Glen Kok and Oscar Roosma drove the Alcan transporting swinging meat to Carr's Market in Anchorage and Fairbanks. Growing from there, Jansen says, happened "one piece at a time." Today there are eleven operating companies in the Lynden family of companies providing multi-modal transportation; Lynden employs 2,748 people, of which 946 are Alaskans; and the company reports 2015 gross revenues of $975 million. In 2016 Lynden was named a Logistics Management Quest for Quality award winner, one of Global Trade's Top Trucking Providers, and one of seventy-five Green Supply Chain Partners by Inbound Logistics. Lynden was ranked fourth on Alaska Business Monthly's Top 49ers list in 2016.

Jansen says that Lynden, like any company, has had its challenges and setbacks; however, Lynden's dedication to serving its customers has always provided the opportunity for the company to grow and innovate. "We continue to create solutions for shipping problems in the state; that's what led us to be intermodal and state-wide," Jansen says. Lynden's current intermodal capabilities include truck, rail, marine, air, and hovercraft operations. "For many of the communities we serve by water, it's the only surface service that they get and often only seasonally, so we have to provide a variety of equipment types to meet those needs," he says.

Lynden has strategic partnerships around the state, "and our partners are critical to our success," says Jansen. For example, Lynden bid on a contract to move rail cars for the Alaska Railroad by barge from Seattle to Alaska, which St. John describes as a "combination rail general-cargo barge service." That started in 2001 and has developed into a service partnership with the Alaska Railroad that continues successfully to this day.

Jansen says a few of their Alaska service partners include NANA Regional Corporation, Western Towboat Co., Calista, Dunlap Towing Company, Wilson Brothers Distributing, TOTE Maritime, the Alaska Railroad, and Matson.

Alaska West Express President Scott Hicks says, "In some...